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HELPFUL HINT
We did such an exercise for a large company where the business goals were “not for our eyes.” Our team did the
research and data gathering required to find business needs that matched up to IAM and DG. We then developed
a strategy map and presented it to the DG steering committee. The uproar was astonishing, and we were interrogated
immediately as to where we had found this information and who was responsible for “leaking” it. The lesson learned
was to vet the findings within the team and executive sponsorship first, and then drive to the final deliverable of this
phase, which is an idea of the financial impact of DG. You may never get to show your wonderful work to anyone.
As an aside, when confronted by management the author revealed that the “top secret” sources were The Wall
Street Journal and the CEO’s letter in the company’s own annual report.

This activity may take a few lunchtime sessions with peers, but a mildly facilitated discussion will
enable a small group to derive a list of 10 to 15 items. You will have collected sufficient business data if
you have items that, if addressed, would reduce risk or drive good numbers to financial statements.
There should also be items that reflect product or service changes, efficiency changes, or customer-
relationship improvement.
When deriving the levers and examining how data will get the business where it needs to be, we
facilitate a meeting where selected business personnel view each goal or objective and look at each of
the six usage categories. Often, we have them complete a phrase: “ACME Company will use data/
content to ____________ as a means to achieve (insert the goal here).” The answer to the phrase is
a specific opportunity for DG to support business value. For example, a completed version of the
phrase might be: “ACME Company will use data/content to target healthy lifestyle messages to
members as a means to achieve higher member retention and lower health care costs.”
Again, you are doing this for the purpose of stating the value of DG, so while the ideal scenario is
a room full of inspired and authoritative business leaders, this may be a team exercise done solely for
making sure DG can measure itself and be sustainable.

Activity: Identify the Business Value of Data Governance

This activity is where the DG team identifies specific financial numbers and determines what business
metrics will indicate the success of DG. This is also a good place to show the cost of non-governance,
or in continuing to use information in a poorly managed fashion. Regardless of whether the team
arrived at a business/data governance intersection from the first or second activity mentioned earlier,
this activity is required to put some numbers together.
For example, if we take an example from Ubetcha Insurancedthe goal of improving our
agentsdwe can ask, “If this happens, what is the anticipated impact on financial statements?” Since
we have an idea of what application of data might do here, we can either claim the whole amount for
IAM (and DG) or take partial credit based on how much of the resulting business action may or may
not be directly enabled by good data. If agency growth contributed $10 million in new premiums, and
we discerned from our levers that good data and content would enable or help improve half of the
business actions taken to grow the agent force, then we can, pro forma, write down $5 million. The
Farfel example states that it can improve equity through customer loyalty and product innovation.
What does a financial analyst say in terms of stock price or retained earnings? Granted, this is early, but
the goal here is not to develop an accurate forecast of business benefits; the goal is to show that without
DG the likelihood of these benefits is reduced.